


the sea is wide

by elizajane



Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, F/F, Not Beta Read, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Rhona Kelly has always been drawn to the sea. When she meets Phyllis Brennan life begins to make sense.





	1. on the balcony

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the Twelvetide Drabbles 2018 challenge. A chapter was written and posted once daily between 24 December 2018 and 6 January 2019.
> 
> Please join us for the [5th Annual Twelvetide Drabbles Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/TwelvetideDrabbles2019) starting on 24 December 2019!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: anticipation, waiting, an arrival, a return

"Rhona, love," her mother calls. "Supper’s ready." Through the open window comes the delicious scent of fried dulse.

From the balcony of their council flat Rhona watches oil tankers on their silent path to and from the rigs beyond the horizon. Joe Kelly had left them for oil, so her mother said. Rhona does not remember him.

 _It was the oil or the ocean_ , her mother says. _The oil or the ocean. Joe Kelly chose the oil._

 _Why the oil or the ocean?_ Rhona sometimes asks.

 _Because we have the ocean in our bones, my little fish,_ Marina Kelly replies.


	2. on the shore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: gifts, surprise, change, something new.

The day is bitter cold, with freezing rain. On days like this, Rhona usually has the esplanade to herself. So the girl is a surprise.

“You aren’t cold,” the girl observes, tossing wet, black curls out of her eyes with a jerk of her chin.

“Neither are you,” Rhona points out from her perch on the concrete wall. They consider one another in silence.

The girl takes a step forward, lifting her treasure up on open palm.

“This,” she says with solemnity, “will be yours.”

Rhona reaches to curl her fingers around the piece of sand-smooth glass with a smile.


	3. a headache

Rhona lays in her bedroom with the window wide open to let the sea air in, a rag soaked in saltwater over her forehead. An old family remedy, Marina always says, and it does make the ache behind Rhona’s eyes less acute.

She fumbles at the neck of her pyjama shirt and drags out the sea glass in it's twisted wire setting to hold tight in her fist. It's a flight of fancy, but Rhona likes to imagine it brings with it the sound of the waves. Sometimes the waves bring with them the sound of the strange girl's voice.


	4. on scholarship

She registers for the course in Scottish folklore because her girlfriend, Vickie, will be in it. Rhona has every intention of spending the lectures admiring Vickie’s jet black curls and daydreaming about the sea-salt taste of Vickie's slick arousal on her tongue. It won't stop her from earning the marks necessary to retain her scholarship and graduate with honors. She knows the tales backwards and forwards in her mother's voice. It's only when she makes her way to the library that the discrepancies between Marina’s stories of roan and seafolk and the historical record leave more questions asked then answered.


	5. a loss

On Rhona’s twenty-first birthday, Marina walks into the sea. 

After they find her clothing, including the silver rings Rhona had never seen removed, neatly abandoned high above the tideline her disappearance is ruled a suicide.

Rhona has suspicions, but it’s too late to ask the questions she should have asked years ago. She wonders how long Marina had resisted the call to return; how long she had remained on land for Rhona’s sake.

She stands on the shore and wonders what would happen if she followed.

“Not yet,” comes a voice, a hand at her elbow.

“You’ve come," she breathes.


	6. an affliction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "affliction" is one possible synonym for "scourge" (from today's prompt)

“She remained as long as she could,” the woman says. She is no longer a girl. Rhona reaches to tuck a wind-blown curl away from the woman’s face. 

“I know,” Rhona says, shivering though she isn’t cold. “How do I know?”

The woman considers her. “You wear my gift,” she says, raising a hand to Rhona’s throat.

“Always,” Rhona says. 

“It eases the pain of your affliction,” the woman says.

“The headaches?”

“Your mother had them also.”

“Yes, but --”

“It is a bit different for your kind,” the woman says. “But in the end, the sea calls us all home.”


	7. a key

Phyllis couldn't be real, Rhona thought, watching her suck whipped cream from hot chocolate as though she were any other student. Imaginary friends don't say  _ Yes _ to an awkward lunch invitation, much less with such a distracting smile.

And yet.

“There's a safe deposit box,” she says, settling her own cup in its saucer. “I haven't been able to face it.”

“It could be there,” Phyllis considers. “Or she might have left a clue.”

“Would you come with me?” Rhona asks before she loses her nerve. “Just to ...see?”

Phyllis offers another of her smiles: “I'd be honored, Rhona Kelly.”


	8. in a cave

The entrance to the cave is below the  tide line; an hour later they would have been wading. 

The pelt is where Marina left it: a small thing that, once seen, Rhona cries out at the shock of ever forgetting.

“How could she --!” A ragged sob, even as Phyllis kneels to place it in her hands.

“Your father stole hers, remember? She acted to protect you.”

The skin is warm to her touch, and Rhona shivers with need. “I…” She looks up at Phyllis.

Phyllis reaches out, then stops.

“If you go into the sea,” she whispers, “I will follow.”


	9. in loco parentis

Phyllis finally nudges Rhona back to land. It takes effort, in the shallows, to shed her sealskin and return to human form. But Phyllis sings her through the transformation, and then all that's left to do is turn her head to see Phyllis stretched out beside her: scales gleaming, as naked as Rhona but for a strand of purple seaweed caught in her curls.

“Rightfully, a parent ought to see you through your first change,” Phyllis whispers. “Do you mind that it was me?”

In answer, Rhona grips her skin tight to her belly and pulls Phyllis into a kiss.

 


	10. at uni

“I'll be late for my lecture,” Rhona murmurs without any real heat. It's snowing outside, already growing dark, and they have the flat to themselves. 

Phyllis ignores the protest, as she was meant to, and pins Rhona against the tiled wall of the shower stall. Water cascades over them and Rhona flutters webbed, elongated fingers over the gills in Phyllis’ neck, feeling her breathe half in and half out of the spray.

“What will Professor Cox tell you about merfolk that I couldn't demonstrate first hand?” Phyllis teases.

“You make a compelling point,” Rhona pants, bracing as Phyllis moves downward.


	11. a name

“Boyfriend up for the weekend again?” Ted asks as they leave the courtroom. 

Rhona has a split second to decide if this is the exchange to set him to rights:  _ My girlfriend, Phyl, yes. She's arriving on the 18:10 from Edinburgh.  _ Once again she allows it to slide.

“Someday,” she tells Phyllis halfway through her second pint and a basket of chips. “Someday I'll be in a position -- don't let me do the same to my subordinates.”

There's a sudden brine to the air. “I could always eat him for you _ , _ ” Phyl offers with a purposeful show of teeth.


	12. solitude

Rhona knows she'll buy it the moment she steps out of the estate agent's car into the gravel drive. 

“There's a right-of-way a quarter of a kilometer up the road,” the agent says, pointing. “But you've a private access point just beyond the house.”

“You say the nearest neighbors are …?”

“Over that hill,” the man points again, in the opposite direction. “Farmhouse is just beyond that pasture.” He pauses. “I understand you might have concerns, a single lady such as yourself out here on your own.”

“Oh, that won't be a problem,” she smiles. “Let's discuss the terms, shall we?”


	13. a feast

“Once again: no,” Rhona points at Phyllis with a mixing spoon. “No. I refuse to honor a man who got so much of our history and culture wrong.”

Phyllis rolls her eyes, “But he got it all  _ adorably _ wrong, darling. We owe your Rabbie Burns --”

“ _ Not _ ‘mine’.” Rhona wields the spoon with emphasis.

“ -- for his bumbling misdirection. I choose to raise a glass to the man who convinced the world we were too fanciful to be true.”

Rhona sighs. “Just a  _ small _ dinner party?”

“Just a  _ small _ dinner party.” Phyllis steps around the kitchen island to give Rhona a kiss.


	14. betwixt land and sea

On her forty-third birthday, as on every birthday since her mother walked into the sea, Rhona goes to stand on hard-packed sand as the restless tide curls over her ankles. She may never forgive Marina for leaving, but she’s lived as a selkie, now, longer than she lived as presumptively human. She understands better why Marina chose as she did. A selkie who went to the sea without her pelt could never come back. But the agony of living forever on land would have broken her. Eventually, Phyllis comes down from the house to stand beside her, hand in hand.

**Author's Note:**

> I knew selkies had roots in Scottish folklore when I began this AU; I hadn't realized that one of the key ballads to establish the selkie mythos is "[The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Silkie_of_Sule_Skerry)" (Child 113) collected from the Sheltland and Orkney Islands. Here's [a recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSxrH8yYI_E) from The Corries that runs about ten minutes in length (!). Not a happy tale. 
> 
> I actually started thinking about this AU early in 2018 because it gave me an explanatory framework for Phyllis' dodgey dealings with the Glasgow mob in season three (2016). That didn't end up coming into this drabble series at all because I hate writing casefic (*inserts self-depricating emoji here*) but I still picture warring clans of Scots merfolk being all sorts of tangled up in the Michael Maguire storyline. You can't argue me out of Ciarán Hinds as a merfolk clan leader, nope.


End file.
